Fox News Hires Gay Rights Activist Sally Kohn As Contributor

January 18, 2012 3:41 pm ET by Carlos Maza

On Monday, Fox News Insider reported
that openly gay political commentator Sally Kohn has
joined Fox News as a contributor. As Karoli of Crooks and
Liars noted, Kohn is a surprising
choice for the network:

I found it interesting
that Fox News has brought on someone who isn't a liberal in name only as a
contributor. Kohn's background is not the usual Fox News centrist
Conservadem fare: she's got ties to the OWS movement, she has strong organizing
credentials, and she's decidedly liberal. Does this mean Fox News is responding
to their tanking ratings, or trying to bring someone on they think the
conservatives can score points on? If the latter, they may be surprised.

Aside from her history of progressive activism, Kohn has
also been an outspoken proponent of LGBT equality. She’s spoken in support of marriage
equality, created her own “It Gets Better” video,
and devoted much of her career to working on LGBT issues. According to her personal website:

She was also a distinguished
Vaid Fellow at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute, where
she published a groundbreaking guidebook for organizing campaigns to win
domestic partnership benefits. Sally also worked as a consultant with the
Urban Justice Center, publishing a report on the experiences of gay youth in
the New York juvenile justice system.

It’ll be interesting to see if Kohn’s new status as a Fox
News contributor will help combat the network’s never-ending stream of
anti-LGBT misinformation. Last month, she went toe-to-toe with Bill
O’Reilly as he railed against a lesbian mother who encouraged her 8-year-old
son to confront Rep. Michele Bachmannover
her ties to “ex-gay” therapy.

Will she bring that same pro-equality tenacity the next
time Fox melts down
over anti-bullying efforts, smears transgender
people, or misinforms
about LGBT-inclusive school curricula?